5 Unique and Creative Recruitment Campaigns

In the world of recruitment, it pays to stand out. Thousands of companies are all vying for a large pool of talented individuals and everyone is fair game. Big companies with big budgets have transitioned to looking at more unique ways they can stand out from the crowd, recruit the top 10% of talent, and build a strong employer brand that is associated with innovation and creativity. So we at Haystack thought we’d share a list of our top 5 creative recruitment campaigns:

Here…have an iPod

When Red 5 Studios set out to do a large recruitment drive, they looked to candidates currently working at competing companies. They used social media to research and select their top 100 ideal candidates and then sent them all personalised iPods.

Now for the good part – the CEO of Red 5 left a recorded message on each iPod detailing the individuals previous work experience and inviting them to apply at Red 5. So what was the end result? 90% of targeted individuals responded back to the request and 3 of them left their current job to work at Red 5. Hire great staff and take valuable talent from your competitors – two birds with one stone!

Stuck in a box

The Swedish Armed Forces took a more forceful approach to bring in a large number of new recruits – maybe a bit too forceful, but fitting I guess, given that they are the army. They used a 4 day long, live streamed social experiment, in which they placed a large black mystery box in central Stockholm.

Here’s where it gets interesting – every hour someone entered the anonymous box through a controlled air locked door. They received no information or instructions and the footage was streamed across social media. The kicker is, they could only leave the box if a complete stranger agreed to take their place.

The campaign received widespread media coverage and over the course of 4 days they had 74 people participate in the experiment. The Swedish Armed Forces were looking to fill 1,430 positions and were hoping to receive approximately 4,300 applications. They ended up knocking that prediction out of the park with a whooping 9,930 applications in total. Not bad, although in all fairness they are an army, makes sense to recruit like one. This campaign was all about making enough noise to draw attention and showcase the career opportunities the Swedish Armed Forces were offering.

The hidden job ad

Ikea used a cunning recruitment campaign, whereby they concealed job descriptions within the packaging of all furniture sold to customers. In a sense they made the customers pay and deliver career information to themselves. The campaign cost very little and the end result was a total of 4,285 applications and 280 new hires. It just goes to show what you can achieve with a bit of creativity.

Fix the car, then apply now

Volkswagen were in need of skilled mechanics; so clearly they should of just jumped on the web and started advertising for open positions, right? Wrong.  Volkswagen started distributing damaged vehicles to repair shops across Germany. But it wasn’t because their management team were bad drivers, they left application forms in the bonnet of each car, helping the company hire talented mechanics and establish themselves as innovators in the field of recruitment.

                                      The App Approach

The Australian Defence Force were looking to offer young students a chance to apply for their Defence University scholarship, however they only wanted to receive applications from the best medical students in the country, rather than a large number of mediocre submissions – saving them time and resources.

They achieved this by creating an entrance exam within the scholarship ad. Students were asked to diagnose a patient on the job ad, through the use of a mobile medical app. The innovative app used image recognition and augmented reality to x-ray the patient when students held their phones in front of the billboard or flyer.

Sounds like a complicated process, but when it comes to medicine, that’s what’s expected. So what was the end result? At the Cannes Lions 2012 ceremony, the campaign won 4 Gold Lions and multiple silver/bronze awards. The unique approach allowed the Australian Defence Force to fill all of the vacant positions with only the top talent.

Time to get Creative

Obviously these are examples of how big budget organisations can get creative with their recruitment strategies, however there are ways you can standout without spending much. For example using social media, video recruitment, or just taking a different approach to how you conduct interviews.

We would love to hear from you about anyways you have shaken things up, and taken a different approach to recruiting. If you have any stories you would like to share, please feel free to leave them in our comments section and give your company or name a big shout out.

This article was kindly supplied by Haystack Jobs.